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February Entry: Mine! Not Yours!

The inset is a mine base set on the edge of a cliff (above ground). The main map is below, at 1/2 that scale showing below ground.

The basic back-story is....

You are asked to come to a gem mine to help. Several weeks back they had a collapse in one of the shafts, and a opening to a cave was revealed. Miners went in to investigate, but didn't come out. Then lizard-folk came out and captured the rest of the miners and took them under. A single adventurer went in previously and never came out...

There is only the mine foreman left aboveground who promises you riches if you rid the mine of the lizard-folk. A few twists later (tidally flooding tunnels, toxic fungus, hidden chambers) it is revealed that there is a large cavern with a kraken in it that the lizard-fold are working with. The miners are being held prisoners to serve the kraken.

Save the miners, kill the lizards, good luck with the kraken, and head home with the gems and a few other goodies

All in inkscape, not sure if we'll be colouring it or not...Still need to do the cliff better, too.

So your son is the story designer?

So I take it your son is giving you the story and map requirements, while you're doing the mapping in inkscape as per his direction? Making your son the publisher I see! That's a great way to get the family involved in cartography, or at least in fantasy RPGing!

B2: "at then end" should be "at the end".
B6 is actually a four-way intersection with one passage caved in.
B7: "both the floor" should be "Both the floor".
B8 is missing a period after "ruby".
B9: "when all of the lizardfolk are" is left incomplete. I expect the word that should follow is "dead". Also, "through and underwater" should be "through an underwater".
b10-b12 should be B10-B12 for consistency.
b10: missing italicization, "miners children" should be "miners' children", & "in creases" should be one word.
b12 covers B12-B14 on the map; make map and key consistent. "This is were" should be "This is where". As for the text being cut off, I think you're just going to have to either change the font or reduce the size. You could also gain a little room by moving the key up to start closer under the title.

The map itself is adequate and I'd be very much satisfied with it as it is; however, a bit more in the way of "artistic touches" to polish it up would improve its chances in the contest as far as the Guild voting goes. Some color in Map A would be a simple thing to boost the "eye candy" factor without adding much workload.

For completeness, I am attaching the pdf being submitted to the other contest. If anyone is interested, I got better luck printing to pdf using cutepdf than saving the image as a pdf. It creates a new "italic version" of the font that gets embedded.